We managed to get out on the South Downs again recently. Another ‘tester’ day – see this post for more info.

On a bright summer’s day in 2009 in Manchester and the city was bustling with activity. I was out with my camera looking for moments, fractions of a second that are extraordinary: mining for the tiniest fraction of time that alludes to a story. The streets must be paved with such flashes of inferred meaning, thousands of moments of geometrically pleasing movements, representations of significance that pass unnoticed each day.  I would have been happy to go home with just one such moment etched into my camera’s memory card.

I sat for a moment near the covered area that stretches over the bottom of Market St. The light was interesting as it lit the passes by in contrast to the darkness of the covered area behind them. I take a few shots and tried to shake off the self-consciousness that, for me, this activity naturally (and possibly unsurprisingly) brings. Continuing to shoot surreptitiously the self-consciousness finally began to evaporate and I made numerous pictures of people emerging from the darkness into the refracted light bouncing from the windows that surround the street. Eventually the light moved on, the crowds thinned and I retreated to the pub for a pint.

The resulting images made up the series ‘Strangers I’. Almost two years later and I’m still fascinated by them. I like the incidental isolation created by the light: strangers in a crowd. I’m attracted to the notion of a shared ‘story’ of these strangers brought to the surface by the unifying effect of the photograph. I could be one of these people. I am one of these people, albeit on the other side of the camera.

For some the resulting photographs could be random pictures of passes by, which is, to some extent, what they are. But they can also be interpreted as allegorical: facial expression and gesture allude to so much but give away so little. They are symbolic. They are simply photographs of strangers but strangers whose images create in me a sense of empathy. Then again they could just be documents of folks on Market St in 2009. Depends where you’re coming from. Depends where you’re at.

In the broad sense of the genre of Street Photography (if there is one) there is a rich history, arguably its roots could be in the 40’s with the publication of ‘Let us now Praise Famous Men’ by James Agee and Walker Evans, although this is probably more a interesting departure from the journalism of the time rather than a discernible emergence of modern street photography. But what this book did do is give rise to another lesser-known book ‘Many Are Called’ by the same duo. Shot in the 40’s the book remained unpublished until 1966. Evans used a hidden camera to photograph travellers on the New York subway. The images are obviously historically valuable as a document of the time and place but they are also more than that… they are in some ways about all of us. The concept behind the images is still echoed in successful modern works: Bruce Davidson’s Subway series shot in the 1980’s, Philip Di-Coricia’s Heads series and the work of Beat Stuli. Even though street photography could be said to be a niche genre (disregarded to a degree by the art establishment and maybe too subtle for a wide audience) it still contains a diverse approach by its practioners. ‘Street Photography Now’ by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (2010) is a beautiful, entertaining and informative publication that highlights the genre’s surrealist roots in the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson and sees them blossom in the contemporary, and often humorous photography of Matt Stuart and Nils Jorgenson (amongst many other talents). For me the lineages of style within the genre are as important as the images themselves. How people photograph and how they see when they photograph infers something about the photographer; Walker Evans used a covert hidden camera, Bruce Gilden briefly invades the subjects personal space, Di-Corcia uses a telephoto and hidden lights, Matt Stuart looks for humour and sometimes the absurd. Street photography not only shows us what is infront of the lense but also something of the photographer behind. We see where they are coming from. We see where they are at.

Some four months after shooting ‘Strangers I’ I was still finding my feet on the MA course I was studying. Bizarrely I had sensed the vibe from the course that my approach to photography was not conceptual enough or something was missing and I took the hint that my street portraits were a dead end (but that could have been my own self-criticism) and I had been struggling on try to find my direction in other landscape based work to no avail. Ironically it was on a break back in Manchester that I went out to re-investigate the Strangers series. One of the criticisms I had received about the work (and one that perseveres) is the ‘invasion’ of privacy aspect, which I shall not tackle here but will write my views on in the future. In ‘Strangers I’ I had not sought or attempted to seek permission for the images. I presumed asking for permission before shooting would destroy the candid nature of the images. So I decided to shoot another series and, this time, seek permission before taking the picture, juxtaposing the first series. Furthermore I wanted to chase the feeling that the first series had given me, I wished to further isolate the sense of empathy I felt with the figures depicted in the images. This time I headed to Piccadilly and photographed people very closely with a wide lens, narrow overhead flash and fast shutter to black out the daylight and street, isolating them. This series became ‘Strangers II’.

On reflection, the images that make up the series ‘Strangers II’ do isolate the empathetic emotion I felt with the first series; they conceptually isolate the notion, they reveal to me that it is a purely personal emotion, self-indulgence on my part. These close portraits gave the subjects the ability to represent themselves through their stance, expression and interaction with the camera; they are able to project a notion of themselves, a representation of who they are. In claiming empathy with them I am claiming to understand and share their feelings, which of course I cannot. For me this draws me towards the conclusion that in the first series I was empathising with myself as the photographer, the distant onlooker. The isolation I feel from the images is the isolation of the photographer, not the isolation of the subject. My only claim to a shared sense of ‘the human condition’ is merely the presumption created through the concept of the human condition. And here any meaning within the images becomes less allegorical: the stories become an expression of the ‘reality’ of these people.

“I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.” Georg C. Lichtenberg

In the summer of 2010 I put aside the Strangers projects and returned to the notion of allegory within the public spaces of the city. ‘Few are Chosen’ was the resulting series and was my exhibition project for the MA final show. This project went on to be exhibited in HOST gallery in London as part of Photomonth. This project too is based in a similar area to ‘Strangers I & II’ although it offers the context of the City of Manchester and in doing so perhaps is less confrontational and specific in its depiction of individuals; here they are more anonymous and more representative of everyman. It was whilst shooting this project that I became interested in the placement of individuals within the public space and so wished to create a third project, ’Strangers III’, this time I would recruit strangers to present themselves in an all but arbitrary public space. The idea was to see if a relationship between the environment and the subject would become apparent.

I placed an advert online and arranged to meet each participant separately at a Manchester location. I chose locations on the basis of ease to meet the participant, as it was easy to park of get to by bus or was close to where they were coming from. There was also the desire to have some vague aesthetic to the location, but nothing more. I got funding for the project by Paul Hamlyn Foundation in association with Cornerhouse. The idea was to create the photographs without any preconceptions, to leave the image up to the how the subject presented themselves and how their self-representation may sit in the landscape within which they were depicted. To be honest it was quite an uncomfortable experience because I felt I was letting go of most control over the images and was unsure whether there would be anything of importance in the photographs. This is still debatable or down to subjective interpretation, but I feel there is. If ‘Strangers I’ denied the subjects the direct opportunity to present themselves in the photograph leaving room for allegory or fantasy and ‘Strangers II’ gave a direct opportunity to represent without the distractions of background and present a ‘reality’, then ‘Strangers III’ was the subject presenting themselves within the context of a public space and competing or assimilating with any connotations of that space. I feel the results are interesting and offer avenues of thought around the perception of others, the power the individual’s self-representation and/or the way in which we perceive and interpret others. And encapsulating this is the affect the medium of photography places on the information presented.

Although I have suggested that street photography is ‘where I’m coming from’ I don’t think of these images as typical street photography, especially when they are no longer candid: as the subjects are able to present themselves for the camera and to some extent influence the image.  These projects are probably portraits, although its not important what they are classified as. What is important to me is the search and the play within the projects.

I love to walk the city centre with a camera, waiting for a moment to happen and hoping that my mind will fall into the state that, although illusive, lets me anticipate the places where something interesting will be revealed and give me the thrill of capturing it. Similarly, these projects became the space for me to walk through, a playful space to investigate and reveal ideas about ‘ourselves’, our environment, photography and ultimately ‘the photograph’ that make me buzz.

“I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”  John Steinbeck

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In the tail end of last year I went down to Spirit Studio’s ‘Charlie Jones’ live room and shot a time lapse of The band Jackers setting up for a live recording. Shot on a Nikon D700 & GoPro HD Hero 2 and hastily flung together in FCP X. I was/am planning to do a better ‘tidier’/higher quality edit, but, needless to say, i have not found the time yet.

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© Lewis Williams 2011

In late August Starvinartist and I embarked on the penultimate shoot for his sirens project. We photographed four models in total from which Starvin’ will produce his unique pencil drawings for his exhibition that is happening somewhere at somepoint in the future (sorry for the vagueness). These two images are my favourites shots (Agnė Lastauskaitė and Eva Jakubiak) and the ones I chose to give a little post-production to. They are not necessarily the images (or models) that  Starvin’ will use as he has his own particular needs.

© Lewis Williams 2011

On a technical note, they were shot with an Sb-900 off camera right with a diffuser and Sb-600 off camera left with shoot through umbrella. There was a large window behind me letting in an ample amount of late afternoon sun that when combined with the soft decor of the room, supplied a nice soft light that was easily balanced with the flashes. The only issue, for me, is the small amount of shadow to the left of the model’s nose (more pronounced in the second image), which is due to the use of a Nikon diffuser rather than using an shoot through umbrella (unfortunately I broke one umbrella and as I was on location had no shoot through reflector with me, which has since become my preferred method even if it needs clamping into place).

Ultimately these shoots are just a bit of fun as Starvin does not really need the lighting to be spot on as he’s using the images for reference and obviously can illustrate whatever he likes with the pencil. But it gives me a chance to see if i can work quickly to obtain a nice shot.

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Lowick Show. The Lowick & District Agricultural Society celebrating 154yrs.